


Lightning on the water

by terror1978



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, M/M, Multi, Other, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 14:23:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17427590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terror1978/pseuds/terror1978
Summary: A work focused on Markus, loosely interpreting canon paths to explore his feelings- and lack thereof.





	1. Lafayette Avenue

He was hyper-aware of everything around him. Even the ground beneath him, he felt it push up against his feet. The snow in the air almost sounded like static around him, the silence cushioning his ears and making his hands feel heavy. Markus felt his thoughts flow through him like they were being coursed through his thirium pump. He opened his eyes. The sun was rising, and the light snow was already beginning to create a fine dust on the ground. The estate was completely surrounded with trees, giving the grounds an isolated and protected feel. In summertime, the bright green leaves danced, and sunlight dappled onto the ground. As the seasons slowly and dutifully changed to winter, Markus thought it was even more of a pleasant effect. The leaves would burn up to yellow and orange and red, and the candied branches would gently toss them as you walked past, slowly falling around you.  
Usually when their owners were asleep, an android would go into standby and run and process the events of the day, forming connections as to how to provide better service or relationships, a setting casually coined ‘sleep mode.’ Each model had a different purpose and therefore Cyberlife had a different amount of intervention with each, but each would sometimes download small software updates, and any outstanding reports or damage assessments would be sent to Cyberlife or an appropriate manufacturer. Markus had gone a few days now without briefly shutting down for this purpose, and could be found more often out on the front porch early into the morning, opting to watch the sky turn a powder blue instead of going into sleep mode for the night.  
It would be time for Carl Manfred, the man he cared for, to wake up soon. Without hesitation, Markus stood up from the wooden bench outside and walked back into the house, the interface automatically recognizing him and unlocking the door to let him in. He made his way to the kitchen and put water to boil, crossing the room to get out bread he had purchased the day before and set it to toast. He cooked automatically, without thinking much of what he was doing- This wasn’t a very new or interesting task, and his mind lingered on the sunrise, turning his LED a steady and thoughtful yellow. He let his thoughts wander as he brewed coffee, cooked a few eggs and kept them warm, found time to give the floor in the area a quick sweep. He was silent and quick, and had gone through this morning routine for quite a while; Besides having the ability to quickly calculate the time everything took, this was almost muscle memory.  
He found himself with a black mug of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and decided it was time for Carl to get up. He set the breakfast down with a cover on the table and walked upstairs to a bedroom. He went straight to the curtains hanging from the far wall, grabbing the fabric and pulling them open. Light tumbled its way into the room. Markus heard a soft groan of protest behind him, Carl’s voice unmistakable. He turned around and collected the man’s medicine like he did every morning.   
“Good morning, Carl.”   
“..Good morning,” Carl responded tiredly, sitting up in his bed and sighing. He watched his android with bleary eyes as he picked up a familiar apparatus, a blue syringe-like item that glowed when it was full.   
“Can I see your arm, please?” Markus requested.  
“No.”   
“Carl.”   
“Nothing says good morning like an android drugging you up,” He said grumpily, reluctantly holding out his arm, to which he took and pushed in his medicine. “You're cold. Were you out all night again?”   
“Yes.” He set the item back on the nightstand. “But don't worry about me. It only reached below freezing for a short time before I went inside.”  
“Mm. I’m not sure that’s any better for you, Markus.” Carl blinked and his eyes focused squarely on him.   
“I told you not to worry, Carl. I wouldn’t do anything that would cause me damage,” He said, and a slightly teasing tone crept into his voice as one of his eyebrows raised. “I’ll take you to the bathroom now.”   
“Fine. Got to start the day sometime.” He relaxed and held an arm out for Markus, who stood up to come to his side and lift him out of bed.

\----

Markus put Carl, now dressed, in his wheelchair, letting go and allowing his hands to instead grip the handles on the back of his chair and push him out of the room, leading him to the dining room on the first floor. He wheeled him to the table and after setting his place, he walked to the kitchen. He retrieved the food he had made and sett it in front of Carl, who smiled.   
“I made eggs and toast. They’re scrambled for a change. I hope that’s fine.”   
“Just fine, Markus. Thank you.”  
“You’re welcome,” He replied, and placed the coffee next to his place setting. He tended to ramble sometimes, despite not needing to explain himself much in the first place. He had been caring for Carl for years now and they had gotten used to each other’s habits. He clasped his hands behind his back.  
“Why don’t you look for something to do while I eat?” Carl suggested, fork clinking as he picked it up.   
“Alright,” Markus said. He let his arms fall, then began a slow wander around the expansive rooms connecting to the kitchen. His eyes scanned the house as they had done hundreds of times, looking for ways to entertain himself. Carl had always pushed him to try new things, to read and play chess with him, even write poetry. But Markus always found himself hesitating when he was confronted with a piece of art, it made something stir deeply in him that he wasn’t sure he understood. As he walked and gazed on canvases and long pieces of paper tacked to the walls, he felt very small. He knew he was just an android, no matter what thoughts were in his head or what book he picked up to read. He always refused to write things of his own, insisting that his programming didn’t allow it.   
He gave the bookshelves and a chessboard a quick glance before he approached the grand piano in the far corner of the room. He traced his fingers over the rich wood before sitting down at the bench and gently placing a finger on a key. A soft note sounded. He brought his other hand to the keys and began to play one of the first songs he had committed to his memory. It was a slow and somewhat mournful piece. Even so, the song filled the air pleasantly, and Markus relaxed as he let his hands take over what he was doing.   
Carl wheeled up next to the bench, and it actually startled Markus a little bit. He fumbled the last notes before smiling awkwardly.   
“I know it isn’t good for you to be awake so long. Look at you, you’re never jumpy,” the man said with a lift of his brow.   
“I was just lost in my thoughts is all.” Markus justified himself, taking his hands from the piano keys and holding them in his lap.  
“What are you thinking about?” He said. He sounded concerned.   
“Oh, no. Ah-.. The music, Carl. I was thinking of changing up this old piece.”  
“Well, I would love to hear it.” He said encouragingly. “It isn’t a bad thing to let your mind wander, Markus. Some of our best inspirations come when we’re not looking for them.” This earned a smile from the android and a calm blue LED. “I’m getting older all the time. I won’t be here forever. You’ll have to take care of yourself without your old man.”   
Markus stared at Carl for a moment, thinking about this statement with a solemn expression. He opened his mouth to respond when the front door opened. Both heads shot up and looked over to the noise, Markus’ LED flickering yellow before he realized who it was. He stood up, and Carl backed up as they both went over.   
“Leo,” Carl greeted lowly.  
“Hey, dad,” Leo responded, an edge to his voice. His eyes shifted, avoiding Markus but not seeming to be too focused on Carl, either. He was tapping his hands on his thighs, flashes of an irritated grin crossing his face. “I need some cash. I’m short. You know how it is.”   
“No I don’t, Leo,” he said. “I gave you money last week. You and I both know where it went and I’m not going to be the one allowing you this.” His statements were warnings.  
“Bullshit, dad! You don’t allow me shit!” He snapped. His eyes went wide. “All you do is stay at home and play with your plastic fucking toys,” He said, his unsteady gaze pointedly focusing on Markus for a good moment. He gave a grin like a wolf just daring its adversary to strike.  
Markus was silent, standing next to Carl as this exchange folded out, seeming indifferent to Leo’s agitation. His visits lately had been further and farther between, and all had the same outcome. He would chew out whatever he could, make some pointed remarks, and usually fly off the handle until Carl would give him money or threaten to call the police. By knowing Carl’s history with his son, Markus felt some sort of guilt and pity for the young man. But he had his priorities- and pretended they were part of his job as a carer. He never acknowledged Leo these days- he was never sober enough to make the same quipped remarks as the other two, and no longer came around for conversation or a cup of coffee, it was all the same and both Carl and Markus felt Leo drifting farther away into the clutches of Red Ice.   
“Leave him alone!” Carl shouted. He was at his wits end. “The answer is no, Leo!”   
“You never loved me. You never fucking loved me!” His anger boiled over, less rational, painful and awkward for everyone to see as the painful withdrawal he felt was too strong for him to see anything else over. “I could fuck up this plastic dick right now. Then would you finally treat me like a fucking son??” He stormed forward and swiftly punched Markus in the gut, earning a quiet clicking as his LED flickered red.   
“You are my son! You are not acting like it,” Carl wheeled forward, attempting to bar Leo from Markus.   
“Maybe I don’t want to be your son. Have you thought about that?” He hissed. He roughly pushed Carl’s chair away.   
“Carl,” Markus said, breaking his silence. He didn’t have time for another reaction, as Leo grabbed the collar of his shirt and jerked him forward to immediately shove him backwards.   
“Fuck you! You’re gonna speak now?” Leo taunted. His eyes were wild. He stepped and launched a palm to Markus’ chest to knock him down. His LED flashed yellow as he hit the ground and grunted. He started to get up slowly when Leo kicked him in an effort to keep the android on the ground.  
“That’s enough!” Carl roared. He was panting, the stress of the brawl taking a toll on him. “Markus, don’t fight back and get out of here. Call the police.” 

Don’t fight back? 

“The police??” Leo yelled incredulously. He spun around, enraged. “The police on your own fucking son, huh?? Is that the extent of your fathering? Huh??”   
Markus touched his LED and sent an online request for a patrol car while he got up from the ground and stared at the back of Leo’s head. “Carl-”   
“What do you think the police are gonna do, genius? I’m gonna tell them your stupid android was harassing me!”   
“Get out of here, Markus! Leave the house until I call you, do you hear me?”

Get out of here? 

“Oh no, this fucking thing isn’t going anywhere.” Leo was quiet, vicious, and turned right back around to make a violent grab for his shirt and push Markus against a wall. He hit a shelf and the items on it toppled over from the force. Carl was yelling for Leo to stop, and for Markus not to defend himself. It was already going to be an ugly scene when the hastily called police arrived, and an android fighting his son would not be reacted to well.

Don’t defend myself? 

Markus’ vision went out of focus as he was shoved again and he heard something ceramic smashing against the floor. 

This isn’t fair.

Leo was in his face, yelling something almost incoherent. 

I don’t have to obey them. 

Markus felt something almost physical pushing at his mind. He couldn’t stand here and take it. Leo was going to damage him, he was hurting Carl. He was blinded by a sheer, dizzying feeling of indignance and.. Control. The world around him seemed to slow down as he fought against his own mind, the programming telling him to do what Carl said, and the urge to defend himself against Leo, who had started to hit him. Every inch of his skin was crawling and the hardware in his mind was ramming itself against its own walls, shattering everything he knew and everything he thought. 

I can’t do this anymore. 

Markus acted. He reached out and pushed Leo away from him, hard. Surprised, he stumbled and fell backward, and hit the back of his head on a countertop, crumpling to the floor.   
The resulting silence made the air in the house feel sick and wretched. The distant sound of wailing sirens was able to be heard.   
“Leo,” Carl gasped. He pushed himself out of his wheelchair and crawled to his son, cupping his bloody face and then looking up at Markus, incredulous.   
“Carl, I-.. I didn’t mean..” Markus started, winded. He clenched his fists and released them, grabbing at his head as the gravity set in, the weight of- was Leo dead? Did he just kill Carl Manfred’s son? His LED was a solid and glaring red.  
“Get out, Markus.” The sirens were getting louder.   
“N-.. No!” He blurted hysterically. “Carl, I-.. I can’t leave you! Please, I don’t want to leave!” Fluid began to pour from the android’s eyes as he felt striken with pure panic, it coming in wrenching waves, a feeling stronger than he had ever felt in his life. He didn’t want to run. He wanted to fix this, and he wanted to throw his arms around Carl, and-  
“Get the hell out of here, Markus!”  
“P-Please. Dad, I-... Dad, I don’t want to leave you,” He begged. He gasped a small bit, feeding the tears pouring from his eyes. 

“Detroit police!”

Markus’ mouth clammed shut as he felt his panic break through into numbness. He slowly straightened and turned to look at the police officers, their guns drawn, and his arms somewhat outstretched in a desperate gesture of defense.   
They fired.


	2. Rebooting

Rebooting…

His head lifted out of the water. The world around him was dark and blurry. He didn’t understand where he was. He didn’t even know if he was alive, and the lack of illumination to define his surroundings didn’t help. He tried to push himself up and his legs didn’t react, falling facefirst again into the rain and mud he was lying in. He felt a flash of panic as he remembered the last thing he saw- the barrel of a gun pointed at him. He-  
A groaning pain in his chest. His processors shuddered as they struggled to function, and with each movement he could feel thirium leak from various places on his model. He ran a diagnostic program, which to his relief, still worked. He rose to his elbows and reached to touch the side of his face, where he found his entire right optical plate had been ripped out, and his audio processor was wrecked along with it. The buzzing sound around him became apparent, as did his distorted vision. An internal alarm alerted him that his thirium pump was unsound, veering on nonfunctional. An android didn’t last long without its heart, and he knew it.  
Scanning his immediate vicinity, he became cognizant of various bodies of all kinds of models and broken parts lay strewn in the piles of sludge and mud. Viscous grime covered everything, plastic and metal plates with the synthetic skin missing. Blurry spots of light emitted from several places, and when he kept still, there were moving parts all around him. He was in a junkyard. Some kind of dumping place for damaged and destroyed androids- dead and dying mechanical beings. If he didn’t find new parts and get out of here, if the last amount of his blood drained and his barely working parts slowed even more, he would grow too weak to help himself and he would be doomed to shut down, striving for nothing, staying awake for the longest time, awake for the entire excruciating process of feeling yourself rot until you didn’t have enough power to open your eyes, and then..  
He had to get out of here or he would shut down.  
He painstakingly rose once more to his elbows and reached out in front of him, placing his weight in his arms and dragging himself forward. He repeated the action with his other arm, pushing away a detached arm to make room. He saw a blinking blue light a foot or two away from him, and crawled forward, desperately reaching for it. He finally grabbed hold and scanned it. It was a miscellaneous internal part- he didn’t need it. He disdainfully tossed it to the side and searched more fervently until he saw the the lower half of a body. He yanked it towards him, scanning the function of the parts, and upon seeing two functioning legs, he felt a rise of excitement and immediately dragged it closer. Once it was close enough he rolled to his back, attempting to sit up enough to reach to his legs and disconnect them.  
He tore them off and a red light shone from the damaged sockets on his hips. He ripped each new leg apart and moved to plug each one in, shoving them into part of his body.  
His new legs whirred and he wasted no time trying to stand on them. He wobbled to the side with how weak he was, but now he could begin to cover ground and find a way out. He stumbled and saw a sitting figure in the near distance, and made a beeline for it, leaning against the high barriers made of bodies and the walls of the pit itself.  
“...Who are you..?” Its tinny voice asked. Markus could barely hear it, and dropped to his knees, placing his hands on the body. He couldn’t make conversation, and when he saw a functioning and compatible thirium pump, he reached to the androids lower chest.  
“N-..” It realized what he was doing. “P-Please don’t do that..! I want to live! I-I don’t want to die, please!” It grabbed his wrists in an attempt to hold him back.  
Markus hesitated, but his mind was a numb shell, and trying to think of the consequences of his actions was like knocking on a cage of fogged-up glass. He had to live, and he couldn’t rationalize his decisions. He didn’t have the time or energy to find another android. He twisted and pulled. The thirium pump yanked out, and the android he pulled it from feebly cried out in anguish before its LED and lights wavered and went grey.  
With his free hand, he reached to his own chest and grabbed hold of his heart. He had to be careful, as replacing out his own pump could be disastrous if not timed right. He aligned the now dead android’s heart near him, and without taking one more second to prepare himself he ripped his heart out. He dropped it as his already spotty vision started to blacken, and with his trembling hand he rushed to insert the new one, using both hands to twist and lock it into place. After a moment of his body readjusting, he was rewarded with a newfound energy, and a new wave of desperation. He had to get out and the only thing stopping him from climbing then and there was knowing he would never blend in with a human world if half of his face was torn apart.  
He now focused solely on his ears and his eyes, half-blindly shuffling with his arms outstretched, grabbing and scanning anything he happened across. The sheer amount of parts was overwhelming, but he couldn’t stop to think about his next action. He certainly couldn’t take time to cry. He didn’t even feel anything. He was numb and had to keep himself alive, and if he was alive, that was all he could ask for. He finally found an audio processor compatible with his model, and he replaced it with vehemence. Before even allowing himself to process the new noises around him, he went to find a new eye. He saw a lifeless face and immediately bent down to scan for compatibility. Success- the optical plate was in place and when transferred would be perfectly functional.  
“Jericho!” The mouth on the face screeched. Markus’ insides jumped. He thought it was dead.  
“Find Jericho!” It repeated, distorted and metallic. He didn’t understand.  
“Jericho..?” He muttered.  
“A place where androids are free! You want to be free? You-” It broke into discordant nonsense, and it was scaring him a little bit. He was intrigued, but he didn’t want to ask. He quickly ripped out the eye and shut the head down.

He could see again, and he blinked, stimulation rushing back to all of his senses. He was still wounded, but not critically, and he would be fine until he could repair these outside tears. He looked up to the sky, and the drops of rain pattered against him. He felt nothing but indiscernible and all-encompassing relief, and a newfound self-driven power inside of him.  
That’s right. He was alive. He lived for himself. He had nothing else to live for anymore. He reached up to the wall and his hands sunk into mud. He held fast and pulled himself up, gasping with the difficulty of pulling his own weight and the irregularities of the parts that were still adjusting themselves to his body. He slowly bent his knee and found a footrest, propelling himself another few feet. Something inside him drove him to get farther despite the strain on each part of his hardware.  
He continued to pull and reached up and grab until he stretched his arm and found flat ground.  
He had never been happier to feel rough concrete. He excitedly shifted and rested both hands on the ground above him, gritting his teeth as he managed to drag the rest of him up. His body was reluctant and resisted him. It was nearly ready to give out. His strength was household chores and lightweight lifting, not dragging himself out of a deep pit of garbage. But he was so close, and couldn’t stop now.

He made it.  
He sat on his knees and panted as his systems finally began to stabilize. His right hand absentmindedly reached and fingered around his LED. He didn’t have any hair to hide it under, nor did he have any hood or hat to wear over it. For the first time, he realized how exposed it made him feel. If he was human, none of this would have happened. He would be back at Carl's right now. Leo wouldn't hate him so much. Humans wouldn't hate him so much just for existing. And he knew that the second he showed up in public, alone, with casual clothing and a stupid blinking light on his temple, he'd just be dragged away and arrested again. He found a piece of metal and grabbed it, dug it under the ring of light and hastily levered it away. The small piece of machinery shot from his head from the pressure without much more effort. He felt nothing as the one indicator of his android status clinked as it hit the ground and rolled away.  
“My..” He spoke and slowly stood up again. “My name is Markus,” He announced to the empty air. He said it loudly, full of conviction and pride. He bent down and picked up a jacket from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder.  
His blood was pumping and he was riding an addicting feeling of power. It was time to find wherever Jericho was.


End file.
